Chinese semiconductor industry

bzhong05 said:

So Huawei has, as a matter of fact, become an IDM?

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They have plenty of time to test the processes with domestically produced equipment before 2025...

liospopo said:

I am not even talking about SMIC. And it's really not that hard for a company like Huawei to became an IDM.
It‘s not disrespect, it's "Huawei is HUGE, so it must do MORE".

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they do (or at least will) have their own fabs, but they cannot fab 7nm chips. In fact, PXW hasn't even started production based on what hvpc has said.

People keep talking about SMIC will just license its technology to Huawei and Huawei will be able to do it on its own. Have they looked into how long it takes to do each batch of Kirin 9000S and how many steps are involved?

SMIC itself has to continually iterate and improve on its process & yield. It has a lot of experienced workers continually improving on the process

Do we think SMIC was at current yield level in 2022 or first half of this year? I doubt it. Seems like Huawei has only decided to up its demand for Kirin 9000S after SMIC has achieved a certain desirable or acceptable yield.

olalavn said:

This has all the information we want to know (sometimes it's just rumors)

1/Huawei's Kirin chips are produced in Huawei's own chip factory. This chip factory was acquired and built by Huawei with a registered capital of 10 billion
2/ The domestic 28nm process technology DUV lithography machine is independently developed by Shanghai Microelectronics. Multiple exposures can produce 7nm chips. The DUV lithography machine has passed the acceptance and will be delivered soon.
3/

View attachment 118419

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I can't take serious any blogger that still says Huawei produced Kirin 9000S.
And we also know SMEE isn't involved with EUV project based on what Havok said (he actually works at SMEE)
As such, I can't take rest of this post seriously.

siegecrossbow said:

Different fabs have different “signatures” unique to the process employed. It is verifiable via microscope analysis.

This is not a gamble when you realize that both Huawei and SMIC have factored in stricter sanctions and concluded that either 1) said sanctions can’t do anything or 2) said sanctions won’t happen.

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How will additional sanctions impact Huawei or SMIC? Are there anything else left to be sanctioned?

bzhong05 said:

How will additional sanctions impact Huawei or SMIC? Are there anything else left to be sanctioned?

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They can cut off Qualcomm chips to Huawei.

ansy1968 said:

Sir from my mentor @Oldschool

Oldschool​

Junior Member​

Registered Member
Today at 10:26 PM
Food for thoughts.
Huawei's concurrent 3 new brands , Mate 60 Pro, Mate 60 Pro +, and Mate X5 estimated minimum at 25million units or as much as 200 million units. All 3 brands carry Kirin 9000s 7nm.
That would make us think about SMIC 7nm volume. The previous discussion on this board on SMIC's capacity would not be sufficient.

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Well, the 25m figure seems reasonable. But keep in mind, even 20m sales of Mate 60 would be really high.

The entire Chinese market in 2022 was 282m. Somehow, I doubt Huawei will capture 70% of the sales.

But I think it goes without saying that if Huawei goes completely to Kirin SoCs, the SMIC capacity & yield for 7nm is higher than anything I'm currently estimating.

That's probably the best sign if you care about SMIC 7nm yield

And if they have the tech to get N+2 yield up, then they are probably at a high enough technical level that they are ready to mass produce a more dense 7nm process (I hate calling it N+3 if it's not close to 5nm density)

bzhong05 said:

So Huawei has, as a matter of fact, become an IDM?

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Clues

1) some Chinese company bought a lot of second hand DUVi

2) Huawei had sign a MOU with ICRD

3) ICRD sign a MOU with ASML which ICRD received a NXT 1980i for R&D

4) from @siegecrossbow previous post that Huawei had received 2 second hand NXT1980i

5) the mysterious FAB in Qingdao and PXW in Shenzhen?

If we connect the dots there is a possibility that Huawei do FAB its chip with collaboration with SMIC and ICRD.

tphuang said:

Well, the 25m figure seems reasonable. But keep in mind, even 20m sales of Mate 60 would be really high.

The entire Chinese market in 2022 was 282m. Somehow, I doubt Huawei will capture 70% of the sales.

But I think it goes without saying that if Huawei goes completely to Kirin SoCs, the SMIC capacity & yield for 7nm is higher than anything I'm currently estimating.

That's probably the best sign if you care about SMIC 7nm yield

And if they have the tech to get N+2 yield up, then they are probably at a high enough technical level that they are ready to mass produce a more dense 7nm process (I hate calling it N+3 if it's not close to 5nm density)

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Why not call it N+2 PLUS.

olalavn said:

This has all the information we want to know (sometimes it's just rumors)

1/Huawei's Kirin chips are produced in Huawei's own chip factory. This chip factory was acquired and built by Huawei with a registered capital of 10 billion
2/ The domestic 28nm process technology DUV lithography machine is independently developed by Shanghai Microelectronics. Multiple exposures can produce 7nm chips. The DUV lithography machine has passed the acceptance and will be delivered soon.
3/

View attachment 118419

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10 billion seems too low an investment for a project of such scale.

tphuang said:

I don't think people are saying that Huawei isn't hamstrung here but that what Hisilicon has designed is good enough that people can still use it as a flagship phone

And this applies to game play people have tested out also.

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Part of it is chip design, another part is the advancement in peripheral components (RF, screen, power management etc.), in software, and in overall system integration which could be quite significant in saving power. SoC is just part of the story. That's why you see the 9000s losing to the 9000 in pure CPU/GPU efficiency tests, but in real world usage it can surpass the Mate 40 pro and catch up with recent flagship phones.

Just like J-20 with an older engine will still beat J-10 with the most advanced version of WS-10 (okay maybe a bit exaggerated with this metaphor).

superdog said:

Part of it is chip design, another part is the advancement in peripheral components (RF, screen, power management etc.), in software, and in overall system integration which could be quite significant in saving power. SoC is just part of the story. That's why you see the 9000s losing to the 9000 in pure CPU/GPU efficiency tests, but in real world usage it can surpass the Mate 40 pro and catch up with recent flagship phones.

Just like J-20 with an older engine will still beat J-10 with the most advanced version of WS-10 (okay maybe a bit exaggerated with this metaphor).

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Sir welcome back nice to hear from you again.